Sidekick Secures Investment to Build a Modern Investment Manager for Today’s Changing World
by Startacus Admin
London-based FinTech Sidekick raises £3.33M pre-seed investment to support its journey towards becoming a regulated active investment manager and mission to close the generational wealth gap.
Sidekick, a digital active investment manager built for today’s rapidly changing world, has just announced a £3.33M Pre-Seed equity round led by Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s largest and most active venture capital investors. Seedcamp, Europe’s leading early-stage fund, and Semantic, a venture fund investing in new rails for data and the digital economy, also participated in the round.
Sidekick aims to close the generational wealth gap by offering products and services typically reserved for only high-net-worth individuals, including access to alternative investments and the ability to borrow against these investment portfolios. Customers will have access to the Sidekick investment team who will provide regular updates on portfolio performance and share high-quality editorial content to help customers build their investment knowledge along the way.Serial entrepreneur Matthew Ford (CEO) and Peter Townsend (CTO) founded Sidekick in January 2022. Matthew previously founded the mobile banking platform Pariti, where Peter was CTO, which was sold to Tandem Bank in 2018. They’re joined at Sidekick by an experienced wider founding team from traditional asset management, consumer credit and fintech backgrounds.
The £3.33M funding round is being used to develop Sidekick’s app further, expand the in-house asset management team and secure the required regulatory permissions and registrations. Sidekick will offer an innovative product mix, including both stocks and crypto, and construct a responsible funding line for customers to borrow against their portfolios when needed.
Matthew Ford, CEO and Co-Founder of Sidekick said, “Most retail investors have two options to build wealth: settle for passive portfolios or try to time the market and pick stocks and crypto themselves without access to the training, tools and information needed to do this effectively. This funding will allow us to build a modern app-based investment service that gives customers the same professional expertise that only high-net-worth individuals are used to. We’ve already got a stellar team in place, and we’re now excited to be working towards regulatory approval to launch over the coming months.”
As several research studies have shown, millennials are the first post-war generation not to earn more than their parents by the time they reach their 30s, and in fact, those born in the 1980s have 20 percent lower net wealth than those born a decade before (caused by lower home ownership). The path to building wealth for this generation is less clear than before. Sidekick was founded to address this.
Nick Sando, Principal at Octopus Ventures, added, “We have seen a surge of interest and capital in public markets from retail investors. But investment products offered to the retail segment still lie at two extremes: higher-risk single stock picking and lower-risk index trackers / ETFs. High-Net Worths can access alternative assets whose higher-risk adjusted return profile can create significant compounding effects on wealth over time, but retail investors are largely prohibited from these due to high cheque sizes and the lack of digital tools to power and distribute these services. Sidekick solves this, and we’re delighted to support the team as they look to close the disparities in wealth creation between High-Net Worths and the broader retail investor class.”Tom Wilson, Partner at Seedcamp, commented, “Matt and Pete have a huge amount of fintech startup experience from their time founding Pariti and working on the exec team at Tandem. Matt even experienced the dark side in his time as a Fintech-focussed VC at Mouro Capital, where we had the privilege of co-investing in Uncapped. All this to say, they’re the perfect team to be going after this opportunity. We believe there’s a massive business here to democratise access to financial products and help close the generational wealth gap.”
Angel investors who participated in the Pre-Seed round include Will Neale, founder of Grabyo, Michael Pennington, co-founder of Gumtree, Ricky Knox, co-founder of Tandem, Michael Kent, co-founder of Azimo, Freddy Kelly, co-founder of Credit Kudos, and Mark Ransford, a serial FinTech investor.
Sidekick’s waitlist is now also live. To sign up for the waitlist and help shape the product before launch, visit https://www.sidekickmoney.com.
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Published on: 27th October 2022
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